


Three Fourths of the Dead Men

by PinetreeVillain



Series: Parts of the Dead Men [1]
Category: Homestuck, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: Interrogation, M/M, Referenced Resurrection, Sepulchritude, Very Mild Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 15:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14404758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinetreeVillain/pseuds/PinetreeVillain
Summary: (Stand alone excerpt of an idea never full written)You both share a look.This is what you’re sure is the setup of an interrogation taking place 15 stories in the air above a burning city and harbor. Thousands of miles out sea, 5 capable men are hiding in a bunker on an island with the last piece of the living equivalent of Satan (Demonhead Mobster Kingpin) hidden and out of reach of the Felt, who are livid to obtain it.You both aren’t saying squat.





	Three Fourths of the Dead Men

**Author's Note:**

> This is an excerpt from an idea that I could never fully put on paper.
> 
> For a crack ship no less (sighs)

Your name is Spades Slick. You’ve been told that you have the loveability of a handful of piano wire and you carry more knives on you than you do cash because you’re more likely to stab someone than give them money. You are a renowned mob boss of a notoriously successful and brutal gang called the Midnight Crew. You never leave home unless you’re nothing short of armed to the teeth with more hidden blades than a military grade swiss army knife.  
But right now, right now you’ve been emptied of all weaponized personal effects, a few pounds lighter because of it, and declawed down to just about everything but your teeth. You’re down an arm, your only remaining limb twisted behind your back in a way that disconcerts your shoulder and makes your teeth grit.  
Quarters’ got you completely incapacitated with one meaty ham clamping your forearm behind your back and applying just enough pressure to keep you from squirming without breaking your only flesh arm. You pretend to ignore how alarmingly effective it is.  
You’re far too busy ignoring how nervous your lack of arms (serrated or otherwise) is making you while you stand in a helicopter populated by yourself, Problem Sleuth, 5 unfortunate dock workers that had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, and ¾ of the Felt (and Mobster Kingpin).  
(You know it was more like _you_ were at the wrong place at the wrong time because you and Sleuth were not supposed to still be at the docks. You were supposed to be 40 miles out at sea by now with Midnight City nothing but a thin line behind you. Somehow you both got caught up in the radius and aftermath of an exploding warehouse facility, basking in the glow of a city falling apart at the literal seams, like two stupid lizards trapped in a glass box under a hot lamp. You didn’t even try to make a break for it in the chaos, the boat got wiped out in the blast.)  
You stand feeling naked, yanked around the cargo lift from compartment to compartment, spitting and hissing like an incredibly indignant alleycat you’ve knocked out of its trash can home. You’ve been evicted from your home and declawed in the process. You will be giving them hell the whole way.  
You spit on Snowman the moment you lay eyes on her. Her eyes are narrowed wickedly, lips tight around her cigarette holder. She’s pissed.  
“You just don’t know when to fucking quit, do you?” She hisses. Her hat shields half her face as she grinds her fist into the table, across from you. “I was hoping you’d get bored with it and just drop it, even take the hint I so kindly left for you, Slick, but no. You just had to keep pushing.”  
“If it’s something you want, I’ll push until I’m dead if it means you ain’t gonna have it,” you snarl back, eyes watching your things get dragged away where you can’t see them.  
“That’s just it, Slick. You meddle to be a nuisance when it suits you. You drop it the moment it’s no longer interesting, no longer of any benefit to you. But here you are, meddling still, working with the _fucking enemy_ , people you hate, throwing yourself into something you frankly shouldn’t give a damn about.” Snowman grabs the table and heaves it away with tremendous force. She slams her hands on your armrests and and snarls again. “I told you to fuck off while you had the chance. You smiled your smarmy little grin and said ‘okay’. Frankly, I should have realized that you were and always will be a piece of shit. But i had thought for once in your damned life you knew what was good for you and minded your goddamn business. Now I see your head is so far up your ass that your brain doesn’t work.”  
She pulls aways from you, the two Felt members that aren’t Quarters flinching away from her. She snaps her fingers, Quarters starts moving you.  
“You’ve made a glorious fucking mess of this, Slick. Two years down the drain, you will not be getting out of this one.” Snowman leads you and your escorts out of the storage crate and towards the hangar doors.  
So with that, you stand in a neat mass of green assholes and dumb fucking dock workers.  
And Sleuth.  
You see they’ve got him tied with nylon rope. Cans holding fast to his shoulders. You don’t let the fact that they’ve got their biggest muscle covering Sleuth’s weak ass like he’s more of threat than you bother you.  
You both share a look.  
This is what you’re sure is the setup of an interrogation taking place 15 stories in the air above a burning city and harbor. Thousands of miles out sea, 5 capable (and quasi-safe) men are hiding in a bunker on an island with the last piece of the living equivalent of Satan (Demonhead Mobster Kingpin) hidden and out of reach of the Felt, who are livid to obtain it.  
You both aren’t saying squat.  
“You have one more chance to get your ass off my hit list, Slick,” Snowman tells you. She casts a glance over her shoulder and Itchy hits a button with a shiteating grin. The hangar doors open, revealing the endless expanse of sky and burningharbor, the carrier circling over it like a starved vulture. The wind pulls at Snowman’s coat. “Tell me where you’re boys took the piece and I’ll let you scrape together the rest of your clutter and get your ass out of here instead of killing you.”  
There’s a pause where you just stare at her, wind and engine roaring. Snowman punches you in the face. You feel blood run from your nose.  
“Fuck you bitch,” You say.  
She hits you again.  
You lift your head to spit acid at her again but see she’s not looking at you anymore. She points at one of the five idiots she plucked off the dock and thrusts her thumb over her shoulder. Hefting his namesake, Crowbar heaves the worker around, puts one of his nice green shoes over the worker’s foot, and dangles the terrified man by the ropes around his chest over the edge of the open hangar doors.  
“Where’re your boys, Slick?” Snowman demands with the voice of a queen.  
You howl, blood spewing from your nose, but you’re still laughing. She’s fucking desperate and it feels you with such a satisfaction, some part of you claps his hands together and says “my work here is done”.  
“Or what?” You snicker, pissed off still but amused too. “You’ll drop a stranger from a plane? But whole bitch fucking whoop. You can throw the Queen of England over the edge and I still wouldn’t give two shits enough to feel like tellin’ you.”  
Over the wind, you hear Sleuth start talking.  
“These guys have nothing to do with this, Snowman. Let them go,” You hear him say. You’re close to telling him to shut the hell up, one because he’s gonna fail your attempt at reverse psychology, and two because sometimes you just can’t stand his profound desire to be the good guy.  
(It’s not completely his fault. When the carrier dropped down to the docks where you had been trapped by burning building and flame. Those dock workers, stranded with two men in coats, saw the Prospit white of Sleuth’s trenchcoat and thought he could give them something to pacify their hopelessness. He was the city’s white dove, a flag that people gravitated to because he’s _such a good person_ , and that pisses you off something you can’t control because it’s a fact. You know how that is, you know what that’s like; to look at him in a dark city and still see light.)  
Snowman’s looking at Sleuth now.  
“Problem Sleuth,” You hear her say. You just don’t like the way she says his name. “Midnight City’s white night. Crown jewel of the holy trinity, Team Sleuth, _elite_ investigations. You’ve been butting heads with the underworld since day one. Why in the sweet fucking Veil would you require the help of the very man you’ve been tearing the city apart to bring down?”  
“Because sometimes you gotta do the things you don’t wanna do for the things you need to do,” Sleuth says. “I don’t think you understand what your trying to do, what the hell you’re trying to resurrect.”  
“I know exactly what I’m doing, Problem Sleuth. I don’t think _you_ understand what you killed-”  
And Sleuth interrupts her, a feat that make your blood hot because _hot damn_ , “Correct me if I’m wrong, which I’m not, but I spent the better part of my entire life putting a knife into the bastard you’re trying to resurrect. So if I have to join hands with the enemy to stop you from bringing back literal Satan, then that’s what I’ll do.”  
You study Snowman’s face as Sleuth continues, bulldozing over anything she might have said in response, “Snowman, I know you’re not stupid, in fact you’re probably smarter than every damn person in this city, but let me tell you that resurrecting Mobster Kingpin is just about the dumbest thing anybody could possibly think to do.”  
Sleuth, always the diplomat.  
“You don’t even know what we’re going to do with him,” Snowman answers. She sounds chillingly at ease, like a situation she was dreading to be terrible turned out to be nothing worth worrying about. She talked down to Sleuth like a condescending adult would a child. It made your blood hot in an entirely different way. “You’ve begun a game you don’t even know how to play and think you’re going to win. But I know all the rules, and the moves, and i’m already winning. I just need one more roll... And you have the dice.”  
“This is a mistake, Snow-”  
“Somebody shut him up,” Snowman sighs like it’s made her tired and all she wants is to sit down and have a drink (you can relate). You watch as Trace pulls a roll of duct tape out of fuck knows where and wrestles with Sleuth’s head to get it over his mouth. Watching that makes you angry, nobody shuts up your dumbass but you.  
Sleuth cracks his forehead into Trace’s nose.  
You laugh because it’s funny. Snowman turns back to you like you’ve personally offended her and you take your eyes off the green idiots trying to restrain your Prospit idiot to meet her gaze.  
You see the anger in her face, in the twitch of her temple, the wrinkle on the bridge of her nose. Part of you is mappy that you can still piss her off like you do. You know that you’ve really fucked with her, like _really fucked_ with her to the point where everything that’s ever proven to be an issue to her is completely and totally your fault and you’re so glad that you’ve ruined everything because you can’t stand the idea of letting her have the last laugh. You’re so glad you’re still good at making her life terrible.  
And the lines in her face suddenly smooth out like she’s just remembered something fascinating. Your grin falters just a little because you know that can’t be good.  
“You’re right, Slick.” She puts her hand to her head, eyes closing like it was so obvious. You give her a look that hopefully conveys that you think she sounds batshit insane. She hums and nods, completely sure of herself. “I’m going about this completely the wrong way.”  
She waves a hand again like she’s conducting an orchestra and Crowbar yanks the dock worker away from the edge with a grumble.  
“When I heard that you were working with Problem Sleuth, I’ll admit that I was utterly confused. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why you, Spades Slick, would help a whitecoat.” You watch the worker crash to the ground at his coworkers’ feet, expecting Crowbar to come and grab you. “At first, the only explanation had to be that it was spite, you’d do just about anything just to piss me off. I figured that you’d drop him eventually, you could never play by anyone else’s rules but your own. But you never did drop him like I thought and for a while, I had no fucking idea why. But now, I think i got it.”  
Instead, Snowman points and Crowbar grabs Sleuth. Sleuth looks alarmed, looking at you and tripping over his own feet and “hey” you start to say but cut yourself off because this is _exactly_ what Snowman was thinking. Crowbar anchors Sleuth to the edge with a foot over his, and pushes the rest of him out with a green fist curled into his trench’s collar. The wind pulls at Sleuth’s coat and you just sort of stare at him for a bit.  
“Slick we’re 30 feet in the air above a harbor. A fall from this height would would kill you instantly on impact regardless of where you land.” Snowman tells you that like you didn’t already know. “Where are your boys keeping the piece, Slick.”  
You’re not sure what to do. Honestly you were expecting this but now that it’s happening you’re completely at a loss. This sort of thing doesn’t happen to you, hell, you’re usually the one putting people in this situation, with your hand wrapped around someone’s throat, dangling them over the edge. Ironically, you find that you don’t appreciate being on the receiving end. You can hear some asshole saying “oh how the tables have turned”. That makes you angry, pisses you off to the point you don’t even know what to do with yourself. Your temper gets the better of you and you whip your shit together to demand just what the fuck she thought she was doing if she thought she could box you in like some pussy, and you look at Sleuth’s face.  
It stops you because you see the whole picture in his face and you didn’t want to, you really didn’t want to look at that small dark corner that Sleuth always seemed to touch, that your boys grazed the top of, that Sleuth managed to dig his fingers in deep.  
There’s the whole picture. Snowman’s got you totally cornered. She’s got you unwittingly holding a pair of scissors with two strings, one holding the Crew and the Team and collectively the fate of the entire world probably if Demonhead is as bad as Sleuth’s raved about. The other is dangling Sleuth from a plane 15 stories off the ground. The big picture is you have to between your boys (and by default the Everyone Fucking Else) and Sleuth.  
You see the big picture in Sleuth’s face because he knows that if you had to choose between the Crew and Sleuth, you aren’t gonna choose him. You can see it in his green eyes. He knows you aren’t going to choose him but he wants you to. He wants you to but he’s not asking you. He wouldn’t make you choose.  
You try to get angry again, to buy time so you can think of something but you can’t. The one thing you’re the olympic professional at and you can’t do it and you’re getting frustrated because you can’t find anything to piss you off, you can’t get angry. It’s like you’ve been totally drained of energy, you think better when you’re moving, but you’re unable to even throw your weight around with quarters holding you down. You’re left with nothing to do but stare at the floor trying to think of _something_.  
Snowman tuts above you, all condescension. You can taste her cigarette from here.  
“Poor Slick,” She sighs, meandering from you like your silence was an answer. “Can’t choose between a side piece and your own Crew. Really I have no idea what your choice might be, you’re a real mystery, Slick.”  
You look up abruptly when Crowbar moves and you watch him pull Sleuth upright again. His heels curling over the edge of the frame, leaning into Crowbar to keep his momentum balanced forward away from the plummet at his back. You’re confused in the worst way watching Crowbar situate Sleuth on the edge like he’s fixing him up for a meeting.  
And you notice Snowman is coming to a stop right in front of him, like she’d sizing him up.  
You can’t hear what she says to him when she leans into his ear, not with the wind muffling everything to a buzz. She pulls out his keys and your deck of cards and she tucks them into the interior breast pocket of his jacket, patting it like it’s a secret.  
When her foots connects with his chest you feel the impact in your own (you know how much it hurts to get kicked by those heels). Simultaneously you gasp as the wind is knocked out of you, swept away with Sleuth’s jacket as he toppled back, falling and then sucked into the wind and he’s gone.  
You chest constricts with something that feels suspiciously like devastation and you’re angry. _Finally_ you are dead-black-fucking-livid you don’t even know what to do with yourself. It’s only when Quarters grabs you that the damn breaks and you go fucking ballistic.  
You thrash and scratch and swear with the might of the world’s angriest fucking horrorterror because _hell no. Hell FUCKING no >_.This big meat torso has another thing coming if he thinks he can toss you around while your soul is a black hole-  
You give the hulking moron a run for his money because you’re cursing him to the Veil and back, promising death and your arm is free, you’re shredding his arm to shit, biting out chunks of flesh and fuck does it taste terrible but now you feel victory as he drops you and howls in pain and _oh no that’s the edge_.  
You lash your hand out, frantic to scratch for a hold. Metal snags along the barcode of your wrist and you’re falling.  
There’s not much you can say about the feeling of falling other than that your stomach floats and so does everything else with gravity yanking at you and your organs just one step behind. Your hat goes flying and you make a vain attempt to grab it. You watch helplessly as your hat catches a different wind and the carrier gets smaller as you fall. You ponder briefly of whether or not you want to be facing the ground when you hit it, to be oblivious or not to be.  
No one can say Spades Slick doesn’t think things through (mostly because if anyone tries to say anything about you, you reward them with a friendly stab to the trachea). You will not go out knowing you didn’t want to see death approaching (that you didn’t want to see what was left of Sleuth splattered on the ground), so to prove a point to no one but yourself , you contort your body mid air so you can stare death in the face.  
What you turn to see is an angel.  
Not quite _white_ , some brilliant pulsating jade _glow_. It’s a sort of something, like fishing line that turns purple depending on where the light catches.  
The angel erupts from the water, droplets whipping off the green-white feathers. There’s unmistakable _power_ in those wings as they propel the armored warrior out of the harbor, the sort of overwhelming and deceptive strength that you see in animals and gods. They launch the angel into the air like a missile, its face contorted into a righteous, fierce battle cry, a sound and sight you’ve not seen or heard since the war. The sight of it evokes such a feeling of white blank awe and stupefaction. Voice loud and piercing, a white sword bleeding ink clenched in a powerful fists.  
It is simultaneously the most beautiful and the most terrifying thing you’ve ever seen.  
And it’s hurtling towards you at mach speed.  
You think it’s going to stick you through with that wicked blade but at the last moment the blade tips away and an arm catches around your gut and you are just barely able to keep yourself from spewing your guts as you are abruptly thrust up in the direction you’d come.  
He’s caught you on your good side, which is also similarly your bad side because you fucked symmetry and left her the same night a long time ago, so while you can wrap an arm over those wide shoulder pads, you can no longer see his face.  
You curl your hand into the middle of his back, between his shoulder blades, and you can feel everything. Just _touching him_ you can feel a power completely foreign to you. It’s like… You are reminded briefly of what it feels like to touch Snowman, the Universe’ life line, but then you think _no that’s wrong_ because this feels different. It feels like touching a god.  
You feel his wings flexing beneath your claws before the world flips again and you swivel your head enough to watch him raise the sword and tear into the carrier like a vicious wolf into meet. It’s so hard to follow every motion, even while literally being carried by the thing that’s moving, but you see the results.  
He dives once and the wing of the carrier slips away into the air. He dives again and the entire fuselage splits like a butchered pig and falls apart in the sky. Green torsos spill out and you glimpse Snowman seconds before she blinks out of existence. He turns in the air and- of course he sweeps up the dock workers. He cradles them down half way before dropping them at a safe height.  
The he pivots in the air and glides out to the open sea, the force of his wings blasting the water beneath you.  
You huff frantically for what seems like hours, arm tense from clinging so tightly before you realize he’s not going to stop. He’s got one arm wrapped securely around your back, carrying you over the sea, and you’re troubled for all of 30 seconds until he reaches up and puts your hat on your head.  
Now you’re pissed.  
You’re being carried across the ocean at an alarming speed by an angel in a fedora like the helpless one-eyed one-armed damsel in distress you are. This situation is so assbackwards _stupid_ -  
“What the _SHIT!_ ” You scream right in his ear. You are still terrified beyond fucking measure to properly coach yourself out of screaming at the Universe’s most powerful attack. “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!”  
He doesn’t answer.  
“Sleuth, you _ass_. What the fuck are you doing?”  
“...”  
“Sleuth!”  
“...”  
“Don’t ignore me you fuck!”  
He grunts, a strangled little noise and you loosen your hold on him so you can swivel your head to look at his face.  
You are only slightly alarmed to see the contorted expression of pain on his face. Whatever he’s doing is actively hurting him. You’re suddenly very aware of how tense he is, still strung tight, how fast he’s moving, pushing himself harder and harder like it isn’t enough. You have half a mind to tell him to _cut it out, stop showing off, you’re gonna hurt yourself you absolute fucking moron_.  
But he’s still got a bleeding sword in his hand and the arm wrapped around you is pretty tight.  
Unfortunately the half mind is all you have left so you let it rip.  
“Sleuth whatever the fuck you’re-”  
You do not get to finish because Sleuth releases an anguished roar through his clenched teeth, slipping into a full on scream. As immediately as it happens, they hit the water.  
The force of the impact is incredibly jarring, even though Sleuth turned to take the brunt of it. Your momentum has you skipping across the water like a stone, rolling, barreling, skidding, and then finally hitting and sinking.  
You flounder like a stupid fish but fortunately your carapace has protected you from experiencing any sort of shock and you sprout up as soon as you can, spitting out ocean shit and glubbing for your idiot.  
You don’t find him but you do find that the ocean has turned pitch black all around you like the Void. It’s so black you can’t see your limbs in the water. You panic because you can’t see Sleuth and if the water is as much ink as the shit on his sword then you know his clothes are shot and the odds of you finding him before he draws are 0 to none.  
The water is black with ink, it stains the barcode on your wrist out of existence. The white suspenders that you thought were classy are black. You can’t keep the panic from crawling up your throat and dig at the water as much as you can with one arm. You try to convince yourself that you only care this much because he’s got all your stuff, your deck of cards, your arm, your jacket, you knives, you’re not this upset by the prospect of him dying nonononono-  
You hit something solid in the water and nearly have a heart attack trying to push it to the surface. His head breaks the water and for a second you don’t recognize him.  
You don’t even think it’s him but it’s him no doubt, you can tell by the familiar contortion of his face when he’s in pain because you’ve inflicted pain on him enough time to know what it looks like on his face specifically. His skin drips with watered down ink, but the salt isn’t enough to keep his skin from turning an ashy gray.  
You’ve never been so displeased to see your color on his skin.  
His clothes are toast, nothing to save them. You spot his hat and somehow your own. You know he’ll be glad you grabbed it because he clings to the thing like a goddamn safety blanket (you do the same so you’re not judging).  
For a solid two minutes you float there, Sleuth pressed to your chest as you bob uselessly in the water, the sun setting over your heads and the temperature dropping.  
You reach into his breast pocket, his heart beat against you hand, and you pull out the deck of cards.  
You’re glad your war chest is made of wood. The stupid thing floats so you shove Sleuth on top of it. You pry for a good five minutes into the chest with Sleuth still on top, effectively making the process twice as difficult as it needs to be and three times more so because you have one arm. Eventually you manage to wrench out your spare arm. It’s the first model you got, it’s outdated and it pinches at your carapace and the soft flesh underneath it, but it’s all you’ve got. You pull out the walkie talkie and close the chest at last. You don’t want water getting into it. You don’t climb on, but you check again to make sure Sleuth’s breathing before you aggressively start beating the walkie talkie against the chest.  
You successfully do not break the walkie talkie, but all you get is an absurd amount of static and voices you don’t have the patience to even consider trying to decipher and you don’t know morse code as well as Droog does so you refuse to try.  
The sky is getting darker as you sag against the war chest, your body finally registering exhaustion. You’re entirely frustrated with the circumstances you’ve found yourself in but you still feel utter relief that you’re alive and somehow Sleuth is too. You’re freezing, Sleuth is dripping ink like a wet rag, skin ashen, coat black, you have no rations that you know of, and you might be stranded out here.  
But Sleuth’s alive, you’re alive, and you might have signal.  
That’s better than the alternatives.


End file.
